Latest revision as of 05:23, 14 March 2020

In the popular music industry, thieves "steal" from thieves,[1] and there's no end in sight.
This is a list of songs that allegedly sound alike where there is no evidence of legitimate authorized reuse (such as licensed sampling, parody, or expiry).
It's not necessarily that the whole song sounds like another song, but when you hear a characteristic passage or the start of a stanza or refrain on the radio, and it sounds like that of another song, you might grow suspicious.
If your ear is attuned to this, then hearing one song will make you hear it in other songs. This is the frequency illusion or Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.[2]
The trouble comes when this phenomenon happens to a judge.

Within the popular music industry, songwriters may settle infringement allegations out of court by agreeing to add the earlier song's author as a co-author of the later song and split the publishing royalties.
This may happen before release or shortly after.
But this resolution is not available in cases where a composer is trying to avoid having to pay royalties entirely, such as music for a video game intended to be released as free software.

In the following table, a demo is a video, recording, or other published work, whether authorized or under fair use, that plays the relevant segments simultaneously (a "mash-up") or consecutively (a "medley") to demonstrate this similarity.
Notes may tell what portions of the songs are similar or may include reliable coverage of the similarity, such as if the copyright owner of one of the songs sued or threatened to sue.
Intentional parodies of specific songs are not included; for those see "Weird Al" Yankovic's discography and a list of parodies by other artists.

↑This demo uses primarily the lyrics from "Just Dance" and the accompaniment from "Tik Tok." Examples exist that balance the two songs more fairly, but many are now blocked in the United States because they contain excerpts of the respective songs' music videos.

↑All copies of "Permanent December" on YouTube have likely been pitch-shifted. Comments and descriptions claim the existence of a "block" flag in the song's Content ID policy (citation needed), and Miley Cyrus's Vevo channel does not include the song.